Nintendo eShop Update: VVVVVV vs. Bionic Commando

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We close out the 2011 eShop year with our roundup of reviews for December 29's batch of new releases.

By Lucas M. Thomas

Happy New Year, Nintendo fans! The calendar's flipped into 2012 now, and the year ahead should prove to be a big one for Nintendo -- but with major hardware events like the launch of the Wii U still at least six months away and no first-party retail releases scheduled to ship for either the Wii or 3DS until February, these opening weeks of the year are primed to be dominated by digital downloads. Nintendo's already been building up some steam in the 3DS eShop in particular, with big-name games like Pushmo and Mighty Switch Force launching there just before Christmas.

Before we get into 2012 proper, though, we've got to do a bit of clean-up -- we've still got one batch of 2011 downloads to review. These five titles went live across the DSi, 3DS and Wii on last Thursday, December 29. So did 2011 go out with a bang? Did Nintendo keep the pre-Christmas momentum rolling after Christmas Day itself had come and gone? Read on to find out.

REVIEWS

Cake Ninja

Appropriately launched into the eShop during a time of year when most people are packing on extra pounds and contemplating some fitness-focused New Year's resolutions, Cake Ninja tells the tale of a woman getting fat. Her husband, a professional ninja, then gets fed up with her frequent feedings -- and so decides to slice and destroy all the cookies, pies and other sweet treats he sees in their home to keep her from being able to eat them.

It's a funny storyline setup, but unfortunately that's about all Cake Ninja's got going for it. You could guess from the game's title that the gameplay in this one is a shameless clone of the more notable Fruit Ninja that's become a hit across both mobile platforms and Microsoft's Kinect -- objects sail across the screen and you casually use the stylus to cut them into halves and quarters, earning points for each slice.

Cake Ninja adds some extra ninja tools to the design as power-ups -- like throwing stars that bounce around the screen to earn extra cuts for you -- and the game seems to be proud of the fact it's knocking off Fruit Ninja, as the only object in the game that gives you a penalty for slicing it is a watermelon.

But that's all Cake Ninja offers -- one game mode for single players, and competing against yourself for higher scores is the only motivation to keep playing. There is a two-player mode, but it requires both players to download the game separately -- and at five bucks a copy, that's not too advisable.

So let yourself be amused by the fact that a video game now exists that's based on a ninja going berserk in a kitchen because his wife got fat. Then move along to more original and more fleshed-out options vying for your eShop cash.

DSi Shop: 500 Points | 3DS eShop: $4.99

Slingo Supreme

The final DSiWare release of 2011 is a new version of a game design that's been around since about 1995. "Slingo" came about as one of the Internet's first casual-play browser games way back in that age of dial-up access and 14.4 modems, combining the random chance of a slot machine with the five-by-five number grid of bingo. That slots/bingo fusion is still fueling Slingo today -- and this latest edition adds in some Supreme extras.

The game is largely luck-based, as slot machines are. You start with a grid of 25 spaces and you tap the touch screen to spin up a set of five digits for yourself. You then tap the numbers that match to start filling in the grid -- so if you've got a "19" in the second column and another 19 appears after a spin, that's a match. Making five matches to fill up a full row, column or diagonal line on the grid earns you extra points, and your goal is to try to score as many points as possible in just 20 spins.

The Supreme part comes in with some fancy power-ups and other bells and whistles that show up at random during those 20 spins -- you might earn an extra spin for free, or get a point multiplier, or even have to step away from the slot machine for a moment to play a Rock/Paper/Scissors mini-game against The Devil himself. (Cue ominous music.) All of these tacked-on extras add some spice and variety, but ultimately you realize that you're pretty mindlessly just tapping away at the screen over and over again with a design that demands very little thought and strategy.

That kind of casual time-wasting is perfectly fine when played for free in an Internet browser window, but I have a hard time recommending that anyone actually pay for such an experience -- especially at the steep price of eight dollars. Slingo Supreme is still OK, but I'd suggest that anyone who's dead-set on playing Slingo on their DSi or 3DS check out last Spring's Slingo Quest instead. You'll have to dig to find it, but it's on sale in the eShop for the same price -- and it at least offers some sense of structure and advancement as you play.

DSi Shop: 800 Points | 3DS eShop: $7.99

Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math: The Big Ben Burglary

The criminal queen of edutainment gaming was revived on WiiWare just a couple of weeks ago, as the new Adventures in Math series reimagined the classic gameplay of chasing Carmen Sandiego around the world by mashing up old-school Carmen detective sequences with some new Professor Layton-like math puzzles. That first release -- The Lady Liberty Larceny -- offered only one case for aspiring A.C.M.E. detectives to crack, though. Now The Big Ben Burglary offers the second.

The gameplay here is exactly the same as before -- you control a secret agent walking around and interviewing witnesses, use the Wii Remote to point at the screen to find clues and occasionally are taken to a standalone puzzle seen where you have to do something like re-create a visual pattern or do some currency calculations. Feel free to bounce over to Lady Liberty Larceny's longer review for a more thorough description if you like -- just sub in "London's Big Ben" for "New York's Statue of Liberty" as the current stolen landmark and you're good to go.

I'm not quite as impressed with this encore as I was with that first release, though, as in her second reappearance the novelty of Carmen's revival feels diminished compared to the one key issue that's afflicting this installment as well -- length. On the one hand it makes sense for each episodic download in this series to contain just one case to solve, but when you breeze through the investigation to catching the current criminal in just a couple of hours it's hard to feel like you've gotten your money's worth.

The thin number of included puzzles -- which frequently repeat in multiplayer mode -- also makes me wonder if this game wouldn't have been better off as a budget-priced retail release bundling a bunch of cases together, instead of a handful of carved-apart and separate WiiWare downloads.

Carmen's still worth tracking down, of course, so anyone who enjoyed solving the mystery of the missing Statue of Liberty should be assured that bringing home Big Ben is similarly satisfying.

Wii Shop Channel: 600 Points

That covers this week's new releases for DSiWare and WiiWare, but we've still got more reviews for you. Turn the page to get the verdict on the latest 3DSWare and 3DS Virtual Console releases.